Second-generation internationalists

Bring together a few hundred similarly aged individuals with similar interests, and the result: Fletcher Couples. Some are relatively well known, such as Winston Lord and Bette Bao Lord (both from the Fletcher class of 1960), or Alice and Thomas Pickering (Fletcher class of 1954), but others travel forth, outside of the limelight, balancing two international careers and all that follows, including offspring.

I’ve recently been in touch with two Fletcher couples from my earlier pre-Admissions Fletcher career. Their news has started me thinking about the children of Fletcher grads, and about raising a new internationally minded generation.

The first of the couples is Laura Conti ‘92 and Mark Montgomery MALD’90, PhD’92. Laura and Mark took the standard Fletcher route from Medford/Somerville to their current lives as educators in Denver, Colorado – that is, through Hong Kong and Washington, DC. Thinking the time has come to give their sons Nathan and Theo a sense of the world, they arranged this year for Laura to teach English at a school in Ensenada, Mexico. The boys, and occasionally Mark or Laura, are documenting their adventure on their blog. Many of us can easily relate to the boys’ stories about life in a new language environment! With the ongoing challenges of balancing two careers, Laura is generally running the show, and Mark is commuting when possible from Denver.

Currently sharing an address in New York (having previously endured a bicoastal marriage), Charles Scott ’94 and Eiko Ikegaya ’94 are balancing the demands of their careers at Intel (Charlie) and the United Nations (Eiko) with plans for an adventure of their own.  More precisely, next summer, Charlie will combine his love of motion and his interest in Eiko’s homeland with a father-son bike ride across the length of Japan, a 2,000-mile adventure that will take around two months to complete.  He and his son, Sho, will be riding attached bicycles, while Eiko and their daughter, Saya, will drive a support vehicle for the first week of the journey.  Charlie is planning to keep a blog of his adventures at www.japanbikeride.com, where you can already read details of their itinerary and preparation.

Though we don’t know where life will take Nathan, Theo, Sho, and Saya in the future, we can certainly guess that they’re likely to be comfortable in at least two languages and two cultures. Ten years from now, maybe the first of them will build on their early international experiences (and follow in their parents’ footsteps) with graduate study at Fletcher.